


what you take with you, each time

by lifeincantos



Series: falls the shadow [4]
Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen, Introspection™, Mentions of War, file under: more through the years vignettes, offscreen minor character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 22:58:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11999688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeincantos/pseuds/lifeincantos
Summary: the catalog of the things you carry grows each year, but it is never so unbearable.





	what you take with you, each time

At fifteen, he eyes the lance in her hand. There are boys smaller than her and boys bigger than her and honestly, each looks as foolish as the last atop horses they barely fit on holding weapons they can barely aim at the dummies. Neal likes to think that it’s not merely his bias against tilting that has him looking at the massive thing with such disdain. 

❛ How many passes will you make with that? You’ve carried it near all day. All off day. These are  **rare** , Mindelan. ❜    


Maybe there’s a test in his words. Maybe as he leans on the bordering fence, dark green eyes hard and glittering, he’s waiting to see what the reaction will be. If he will finally strike behind the Isles - trained smoothness and find something more volatile than the tranquil surface he’s halfway convinced is as much Yamani as it is Kel. 

❛ The more I practice, the better I’ll be. ❜    


Today is not that day, but he’s not disappointed. 

❛ I suppose I  _shouldn’t_  be surprised at being the only one with the good sense to take every opportunity to rest. Even though I  _am_  your sponsor, your guide, your older and wiser half. ❜   


Kel says nothing, watches him carefully. He wonders if he imagines the way the corner of her lips flutter upwards. He tests a little further. 

❛ Back in  _my_  day, we respected our elders. ❜   


There are many things she might say to that – he couldn’t fault her if she brought up the way he locked horns with the Stump, or the fact that despite the gap between them they are in the same year. All she does say is, ❛ Yes. ❜ 

_Cheeky_  thing. He very much likes that about her. Huffing a short bark of a sound, he waves a noncommittal hand at her. ❛ Well  _I’m_  going to find some lovely corner to read in. Please try not to let your arm fall off carrying that, Mindelan. ❜ 

❛ Yes, M’lord. ❜   


Neal laughs. 

* * *

❛ You’re going to drop one. ❜   


❛ Blasphemy. ❜   


❛ You don’t need all those. ❜   


❛  _Blasphemy!_  ❜   


❛ Are you sure they’re going to help? ❜   


❛ Keladry, I have never been so wounded. Not even when Jesslaw nearly impaled me flinging that gods cursed lance around last year. ❜   


❛ It’s just a lot of books to carry. ❜   


❛ Knowledge is as limitless as it is unquantifiable. ❜   


❛ We can weigh those books. ❜   


❛ You know, they all think you’re so stoic. So well mannered. So steadfast. If they saw the lip you give me on a daily basis – ❜    


❛ Hear. Not see. ❜   


❛ —  _Anyway_. I’m not about to grapple with a mystical chamber and the future of my knighthood without reading the accounts. ❜   


❛ No one speaks of what they see. ❜   


❛ I’ll find something out. Now shush and carry some of these. ❜   


* * *

_**(**_ at ten, he helps his mother carry herbs in from his father’s garden. she tells him their names, one by one, and shows him the defining features of each. he looks at them so unflaggingly that he nearly walks right into the doorframe. Wilina guides him through, free hand on his shoulder. 

when he joins his father in the study, she waits until the combined calls from Jessa and Willis call her away. Baird shows Neal the book that has all his poultices and tinctures in it, explains how the Gift is wonderful and should be studied and practiced, of course, but one must also always carry the knowledge of how to bind wounds and mix plant essences into gashes – how to stitch and heal with the Gifts the earth provides as well.  _ **)**_  

* * *

At nineteen, he staggers under the weight of Lady Alanna’s things as he carries them out. How the horse manages to hold all of this in the saddlebags, he’ll never know. But then, horses are tricky, spiteful creatures. He wouldn’t doubt that the beast will tote the things to the end of the earth simply because someone remarked once that the load was too heavy. 

❛ Is that the last of it, Queenscove? ❜   


He purposefully does not note how she looks upwards at him to ask the question. For any jokes at her  _ **(**_  and his, ultimately _ **)**_  expense, he has always felt eclipsed by her, no matter how many hands difference in height they stand. 

❛ And then some, My Lady. ❜   


There’s still a thrill of fear in his stomach when he sasses her, but he supposes, logically, that if her looks really  _could_  kill, he’d have been dead long, long ago. Long enough ago that he wouldn’t have even had the  **time**  to worry over the guilt of his placement as her squire. – Thoughts that he will not,  _not_ ,  **not**  dwell on. 

After eyeing him for a long moment, probably knowing full well the way he feels like he’s as good as under the sword’s sharp edge, she deftly slips one foot in the holster and mounts her ride. Neal follows suit a beat later, Magewhisper calm and gentle beneath him. 

❛ — When we get to town, our first stop will be the infirmary there. You need more practice and they need the help. ❜   


Neal cannot smooth his face into stoicism – it has never been one of his strong suits. When she turns, she must see the way his eyes have lit up and his lips have parted. Something a little soft flickers across her expression, tempering it. Neal’s not familiar with it. She waits until he falls in line with her at a steady trot to speak again. 

❛ You know, I was told once to heal. As much as I could. At least one life for every that I took. I always carried that with me. – For some reason, I doubt you need that advice. ❜   


He feels his expression morph as well at that, also becoming something soft and confused and unfamiliar. Lady Alanna looks at him, and she smiles. ❛ You’re doing well, Queenscove. ❜ His throat burns, but she saves them both the embarrassment, ❛ But you’ve a long way to go before you’re halfway decent. ❜

❛ Yes, Lady Alanna. ❜   


* * *

He’s twenty three when the Chamber spits him out and he collapses on his knees in the hall. Alanna is there, silent and serious and lacking all the sharpness he has known of her. Or maybe he’s just not afraid of it anymore. She throws a blanket around his shoulders and it awakenings a chill in him he hadn’t known he’d possessed – raking at his bones, iron cold. She takes his weight, half carrying him out. 

But he cannot leave. Because there is something he needs to know – a need that burns at his frozen flesh, palpable, tangible, frighteningly permanent. With whatever strength he has left, he pulls them to where Yuki stands. He is trembling, crown to sole, and has nothing left in him to mask the question in his eyes – no way left to hide what is truly  _ **him**_. 

Yuki answers by silently passing him her shukusen. He places it in his belt, and for the rest of his life he keeps it close by. 

* * *

A hole in the heart, a lung that won’t inflate all the way, a bone set wrong, another bone set wrong, a broken one. A rib out of place. Scarring that impedes movement. 

The list of injuries these people enter Haven with is long and grows longer by the day, catalogued by his mind that won’t sleep. Twenty four and only half trained,  _ **surely**_  there is someone more qualified. But here he is, leading Haven’s infirmary, noting every ailment that walks through his door. Those seeking refuge and those sent to fight for the Crown are indistinguishable. Sick. Dying. Given a shadow of a home or a sword. Given no chance. 

The little girl  _keens_  when she cannot find her doll, mourning something so large she cannot understand it. Neal summons his Gift, a little too much to spare, and lets her sleep, keeps her warm, makes someone, anyone go and find it, gods damn it. She will wake up with her doll, and she will carry it for as long as she needs to, and then longer. 

Dom drags him away, sometimes. Sits next to him and makes him eat. Feeds him himself when Neal’s arms are trembling too much and he can’t escape the fatigue and the list, the  _list_ long enough to wrap around his neck and strangle him twice over. He burns, he hates, he appreciates, he loves, he cannot go another step but he does. 

A bleed in the lung he missed, an arrow to the heart he could not mend, an infection, an oversight, not an oversight, Gil turning blue under his hands as he pulls his Gift back, knowing and hating that he must and will save it for Kel – this is how they die and this list, too, he carries. 

* * *

❛ The Kraken, ❜ Fanche says one day as they sit side by side in the mess. ❛ That’s what they’re calling it. It never leaves you, once you see it. Changes you. You carry it ‘till the day you die. And maybe then some, who knows? Never met the Black God, can’t say if he’s a merciful sort or not. ❜   


* * *

Dom carries the cat down. Neal carries Kel. 

* * *

Neal’s office would be a mess if he weren’t so particular about organizing. It’s nearly overflowing. It’d be too much in the comfort of the palace; here in New Hope it’s downright audacious to have so much. A lucky, waving cat. A little glass horse, delicately blown. Letters stacked and tied neatly – Dom’s, his father’s, his mother’s, Jessa’s. Notes from Merric, things for cleaning blades, flowers pressed and dried. Handmade dolls with crowns of plants. Yamani coins. A shukusen. 

He carries in requisition forms, the specter of battle, the memories of dead and dying, the feeling of bloodied flesh and human - warmed steel on his hands. These stay with you forever, apparently. 

But they are not the only things he carries. 

**Author's Note:**

> another introspective gen piece about neal & crew ?? wild... who would have guessed... honestly my favorite pleasure in life is reading iterations of how amazing & important kel is in my compliments. but a serious thank you to all commenters !! you are so inspiring, i'm so happy to find people who love my oversensitive, cynical, pure hearted son as much as i do!! 
> 
> comments are, of course, loved. and find me on tumblr: heartnowblossoming / madefate.


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